Great leaders pattern themselves after (drumroll, please) themselves. As stated by Jim Rohn, noted business philosopher, “all great leaders keep working on themselves until they become effective.”
Yet a significant amount of the billions of dollars we spend each year on leadership training is not about working on ourselves but patterning our leadership on some other leader’s life, leadership model, or leadership principles.
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Author, change agent and leadership trainer, Greg Wallace is CEO of The Wallace Group which consults organizations and leaders to implement change and transformation which produce results that meet the leader’s definition of success. Learn more about developing a personal model of leadership in his second book, “Transformation: the Power of Leading from Identity”.
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If you knew you could improve your company’s revenue with one single strategy, would you do it? If you heard there was a way to enhance your business profits, would you want to know what it is?
Most leaders would likely answer “yes.” Yet every day in corporate America, business leaders neglect to take the steps that would give them a competitive edge.
One of the quickest ways, and in many ways the easiest to implement, is to balance their teams by including more women in positions of leadership. For the teams that find that balance, these are three common results they can expect:
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Howard J. Morgan and Joelle K. Jay, PhD, of the Leadership Research Institute (LRI) are co-authors of The New Advantage: How Women in Leadership Can Create Win-Wins for Their Companies and Themselves (Praeger / 2016). LRI is a global consulting firm specializing in leadership and organizational development. Morgan has worked with over 1,000 CEO and executive team members of the world’s largest organizations on improving corporate and executive performance. Jay is an executive coach and keynote speaker, and specializes in the advancement of executive women. For more information please visit www.TheNewAdvantageBook.com.
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When you walk into someone’s place of business to shop or buy something, what are you expecting?
Most people (you included and me included) expect someone friendly, someone helpful when you need them, to be served in a timely manner, to be given fair value, to be presented with a quality product, to make the process quick and easy, and to be thanked whether you give them the business or not.
Then the question is: What do you get?
Typically, you get a mechanical welcome, someone feebly says, “can I help you?” Followed by people telling you what they can’t do versus what they can do, or what they don’t have. Maybe a bunch of sentences containing the word policy, and an inability to understand that just because they’re out of an item, doesn’t mean you don’t still want it or need it, and will likely go to their competition to get it. All this, and a touch of rudeness.
Now, maybe I have exaggerated a bit. But I can promise you, not by much.
And the interesting part is, many companies have multiple locations where the products are the same, but the service is not recognizable from place to place – one may be fantastic, while the other may be pathetic.
The inconsistency of people-performance can make or break a business.
Here is what will make you or anyone near you, or anyone in a job they consider beneath them, or anyone who hates work, understand the formula for emerging into a better career – certainly a better job. And all of these elements will be reflected in your performance.
1. Your internal happiness. Happiness is not a job, it’s a person.
2. Your attitude toward work. Do you just go to pass the time for a paycheck, or are you there to earn your pay with hard work?
3. Your self-esteem and self-image. How you feel about yourself.
4. Your desire to serve.
5. Your commitment to being your best.
6. Your boss and how your boss treats you.
7. Looking at your job as menial rather than a steppingstone towards your career. It’s not “just a job” – it’s “an opportunity.”
8. Pride in your own success.
9. Realizing that you’re are on display, and that your present actions will dictate your future success.
9.5 Every today is a window to your every tomorrow.
Companies spend millions, sometimes billions of dollars in advertising, branding, merchandising, strategizing, and every other element of marketing that they believe will bring business success. But if there are people involved, marketing means nothing if the people are not great.
When I walk into a business, I ask people, “How’s it going?” I get the most disappointing answers like, “Just three hours to go.” Or, “It’s Friday.” What kind of statement is that? What does that tell you about what kind of employee they are, much less what kind of service is attached to their attitude?
When you go to a hotel, a fifty-million-dollar business rests on the shoulders of shoulders of the front desk clerk. That’s the first impression you have. In a retail business, it’s no different. All the advertising gets you to come into the store. From there, it’s all about the retail clerk. Doctors and dentists now advertise. But it’s the person who answers the phone that gives a true reflection of what the doctor or dentist office will be like.
What is your company like? Do you have any people working there that hate their job? Do you have people with “attitude?” What can you do?
These elements will get YOU to BEST:
1. Set the example by being your best and doing your best
2. Hang around with the winners, not the whiners
3. Create service best practices, and have everyone implement them.
4. Have weekly internal positive attitude training.
5. Look at the best companies in America for best practices you can adapt and adopt.
6. Do your best at everything, everyday.
6.5 Work on your own attitude. You must think you will succeed, before success is yours. You must think you will be happy, before happiness is yours.
The root word of “your” is YOU. Each employee has the responsibility of representing their company to their customers in a way that reflects the image and reputation needed to build or maintain a great reputation and a leadership position.
Anything less than “best” is not acceptable. But here’s the secret: Don’t do it for your company – do it for yourself. Develop the pride in doing your best at your job even if it’s not your career, and never use the word “just” when you describe yourself.
Real winners are few and far between.
And making yourself one is a choice.
If you want a couple more attitude boosters and one major attitude secret go to gitomer.com, register if you’re a first time user, and enter ATTITUDE FOREVER in the GitBit box.
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].
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Most companies have corporate values that they hope embody their company, their employees, and the way they wish to be viewed by the public. Unfortunately, many organizations’ values statements are pages long. Too dense to be remembered and too complex to be ingrained in the company culture. Ours were.
We’ve learned there is power in simplicity, and that is why we at National Life Group have shifted our focus to three simple, authentic values: Do good. Be good. Make good. Just six words, but we’ve been able to translate them to a cause and a mission that drives everything we do. You and your company can do the same.
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Mehran Assadi serves as president and chief executive officer of National Life Group. Since taking that role in 2009, he has led major growth in sales of National Life’s life and annuity products and worked to build a culture of collaboration, engagement and empowerment among employees. Mehran and National Life Group were highly featured in the recently published book CAUSE! A Business Strategy for Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness, by Drs. Jackie and Kevin Freiberg, about the power of creating cause-related companies.
National Life Group® is a trade name of National Life Insurance Company, Montpelier, VT, Life Insurance Company of the Southwest, Addison, TX, and their affiliates. Each company of National Life Group is solely responsible for its own financial condition and contractual obligations. Life Insurance Company of the Southwest is not an authorized insurer in New York and does not conduct insurance business in New York.
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Managers translate leadership’s vision into the day-to-day actions of the workforce. They do this through their decisions, published standards, and operational procedures. They reinforce desired behaviors through organizational performance measures and management observations. But how do executives ensure their manager and supervisor direct reports understand and properly translate and reinforce their vision with the workforce? One method of doing so is through the conduct of paired observations.
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Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.
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